While we were negotiating, Markus Brown, the head of the payment company Wirecard, was arrested in Germany for the loss of almost 2 billion euros. The money has never been transferred to the Philippines, but somewhere it may have been transferred.
What the German authorities are not saying at the moment is that there may have been the largest fraud or money laundering operation in Europe in the non-banking sector. If Wirecard really did fictitious transactions just to look better in the eyes of customers, then it will be told later as anecdotes in the financial world.
At the same time, it is clear that a fiction of EUR 2 billion is possible and that payment companies are the next link in the money laundering chain. Why? Although the supervision of payment companies is similar to the supervision of banks and they have to meet all the same AML requirements as banks, their activities are much less transparent in nature, as companies work with hundreds of bank accounts worldwide for even one customer. One payment company can transfer money to another, it can make internal transfers to a customer, make fictitious transactions throughout the financial year – until the audit, which, of course, will show a shortfall, but in reality the billions washed away and law enforcement will have the opportunity to sue.
Latvians do not act like Germans
For similarity – at the beginning of June, Latvian ombudsmen conducted repeated searches of “ABLV banka”. More than two years after the closure of the bank and the announcement of the US institution FinCEN about the activities of ABLV Bank! Why didn’t they do it two years ago? What has changed? Why don’t our law enforcement officers act like Germans and immediately issue arrest warrants for perpetrators? All the salt in this case is motivating. The Germans are really fighting the lawlessness and acting on the first suspicions, while our legal system is acting on a different motive: to fill in the budget gaps and then find out the legitimacy of the actions. It is, of course, noble, to rob in the name of the people, as Robin Hud once did, but how much it improves the image of our country in the financial world remains a question.
Inese Gise was also the head of the 1st Division of the Economic Crime Control Department of the Criminal Police Department of the State Police several years ago – when ABLV Bank started the case! She commented on the necessary changes in the Criminal Procedure Law from the point of view of the police in the Saeima Criminal Law Subcommittee, and a large part of her recommendations, as well as those of the Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice, were approved.
Procedural and substantive law
These are Articles 124, 125, 126 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which entered into force in a completely new wording on December 24 last year, speaking specifically about money laundering. There are still a number of amended articles in the Criminal Procedure Law that apply to money laundering, but the most prominent are those mentioned.
There are very tricky procedural and substantive rights here, as well as what the state proves and what the accused person, or just another suspect, has to do, in some cases getting married that money can be frozen indefinitely just by playing with the word “suspicion”. When asked about these articles, various lawyers also commented that until there is a specific practice with a visible end result, there is no reason to complain to the Constitutional Court.
In essence, Article 124 deals with the subject-matter of proof, and in paragraph 6 it clearly states that the criminal origin of the property may be presumed if “there are grounds for believing that the property is likely to have a criminal rather than a lawful origin”. Namely, suspicion is the beginning of everything. Paragraph 7 of the same article also states that “in order to prove money laundering, it is not necessary to prove specifically from whom the proceeds of crime were obtained.” In fact, this article does not talk about personal guilt. It is about the means of trivializing the “guilt of money” – in fact for an indefinite period of time. Article 125 deals with the legal presumption of fact, or what a police officer or prosecutor accepts as a criminal offense and how. Paragraph 7 (3) appeared: “It shall be presumed that the property which has been the subject of money laundering has been obtained if the person involved in the criminal proceedings is unable to explain reliably the lawful origin of the property and if the body of evidence gives the prosecutor a presumption. that the property is likely to have a criminal origin. ” This is the time when money can be frozen without grief, hoping for a positive court decision and without much fear of the consequences for the state. How extensive the body of evidence must be is already the work of the police and the prosecutor’s office, and it is sufficient at first that the transfer looks suspicious.
Finally, Article 126, which deals with the subject of the burden of proof and the burden of proof, contains some interesting additions, relieving the state of excessive financial obligations if the prosecutors have shot wrong. Namely, Part 3 states that if any of the presumed facts is false, then the accused or someone else proves it wrong. Let me remind you that otherwise everything in our country is proved by the state. 31 and Part 4 contains a supplement specifically on criminally obtained property. It is up to the person to prove that it was not obtained illegally, and if the person is unable to do so in time, compensation for the damage cannot be obtained. In short, if public money is seized, the suspects can be kept as long as they want, but if the first suspicion expires, new suspicions can arise. Recently In the magazine “Dienas Bizness” we published a concrete example of how such freezing of money for 900 thousand euros has been going on since the closure of “ABLV”, but no one has been charged. In short, in practice there is already a precedent for this trivial situation, that money is practically to blame, but people continue to live their lives without it. On the other hand, if a citizen fails to prove that his money has been legally obtained, then, for example, after 10 years he will receive his million without any interest.
There is no time limit
In this similarity with the actions of German law enforcement in the case of Wirecard and the 2.5 years of Latvian law enforcement in bending ABLV, there is one main difference – Germans take care of the stable operation of the transfer system in the future, while Latvians look to the past, where a million or ten still arrest, freeze, budget and, where recently adopted laws on activities could be applied two, five or even ten years ago.
I emphasize that I am not confused here. Read the law – if the money was obtained illegally, then the time limit does not apply to this fact. A person will remain innocent, because previously there was no such law, consequently – there is no punishment. Human rights remain respected, a person is not punished retroactively, but money does!
–
